The league wants and needs to tap into the growing cord-cutter market—to lure those younger fans or maybe-fans who are giving up on cable and satellite to watch video on the web. Twitter, of course, has motives of its own: while it boasts a loyal user base of hundreds of millions, the Tweet Machine is struggling to attract new people (bots and eggs are in healthy supply). The NFL partnership allows Twitter to dig deeper into the sports world, with the hope that fans will come to watch the games and stick around to talk about them. Or do both simultaneously.

Meanwhile, Mark Zuckerberg and his crew will surely assume the role of spurned lover. Facebook was the one to get up from the negotiating table, having balked at the NFL's advertising demands, but it's still a bitter pill to swallow. The social network is making an aggressive play into video through Instagram and Facebook Live, and it wants to be the go-to place for the kind of "moments" on which Twitter currently has a stranglehold. (Twitter literally has a new0ish feature called "Moments.") If Facebook wants to eventually be your source for everything—and it increasingly seems that is the case—then today's NFL deal is a stumbling block.

According to the Times, Twitter's share price jumped more than $17 after the news. Money talks.

[H href='http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/06/sports/football/nfl-will-stream-thursday-games-on-twitter.html?_r=1' target='_blank">The New York Times']